Abstract

This article offers elements to assess the effects of the world economic crisis in the Asia-Pacific region. The mechanisms and development of the subprime crisis are briefly recalled in order to examine how far they reach in the area. Examining the situation of the area’s economies, with a distinction between developed economies, emerging countries and developing economies highlights how the transmission of the crisis grows with the level of development. Being vulnerable due to their important dependency on revenues from outside (tourism, raw materials export, private transfers, aid…) the Pacific small developing economies have been indirectly affected by the crisis. Indeed the world economic crisis has increased the economic difficulties which the governments and populations of the Pacific already had to face when the oil and food prices rose, which seriously undermined them. Focus is laid on the three French Pacific territories. As they have hardly integrated international exchanges and rely mainly on transfers from the metropolis, their characteristics have somehow protected them from the crisis. The macroeconomic indicators of the Pacific industrialising countries are rather favourably-oriented yet the slowdown of economic growth has further weakened the most vulnerable populations.

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